About OASIS

With the advent of the Digital Era, the record of human intellectual activity has rapidly transformed from paper to digital forms. By collecting and preserving digital intellectual heritage at the national level, OASIS (Online Archiving &Searching Internet Sources: OASIS) aims to pass down digital intellectual heritage as educational and research resources to future generations.
After being operated on a trial basis in January 2004, OASIS then became a standing project pursued in earnest by the National Library of Korea began pursuing to collect and preserve online digital resources since 2005.

Amidst the rapid development of information and communications environment, many intellectual creations nowadays get produced in digital forms and released online—however, they are only available for a short period of time and disappear soon after. As a result, UNESCO announced its mandate to preserve and collect online resources in the "Digital Heritage Preservation Charter" in October 2003.

Meanwhile, major libraries around the world have launched various projects and campaigns that collect and preserve online intellectual resources since the mid 1990s, followed by notable findings: for example, according to some reports, countries neglecting the collection and preservation of digital resources can lead to the current generation being labeled as “the Dark Age” by future generations.

As the national institute in charge of collecting and preserving knowledge resources in Korea, the National Library of Korea has initiated OASIS which is a project that collects and preserves online resources that are easily lost to pass them down to future generations.